State Sen. John Alario switches to GOP

BATON ROUGE - State Sen. John Alario, a former two-time House speaker and a fixture in state politics for nearly four decades, is now a Republican.

Sen. John Alario

After weeks of saying he was likely to abandon his Democratic allegiance by the end of the year, Alario quietly made it official late last week.

"I just casually went in and took care of it," Alario, of Westwego, said. "I had been pondering it for some time and didn't want to make a big deal of it."

With Alario's switch -- and the recent defection of Sen. John Smith of Leesville from the Democrats to the GOP -- the partisan balance in the Senate now stands at 20 Democrats and 18 Republicans, with one vacancy.

Republicans recently gained a plurality in the 105-member House, 51-50, for the first time in modern Louisiana history.

Alario said his switch was motivated by dissatisfaction with the national Democratic Party, which has seen many of its conservative Blue Dog members replaced by Republicans in recent years.

"I'm not angry with my local Democratic friends," Alario said. "I have an issue with the national Democratic Party and the direction it's going."

But Alario said state politics also played a role in the decision; specifically, a desire to be Senate president next year, when Republicans are expected to take majority control of the upper chamber.

"Whether I'm a Democrat or Republican or the Whig party, I'd like to be president of the Senate," Alario said. Switching parties "certainly plays into the politics of the situation ... it doesn't hurt to be in that party."

Alario is serving his first term in the Senate after representing the Westwego-based House District 83 from 1972 to 2008. He served two four-year terms as speaker under Gov. Edwin Edwards, and chaired the budget-writing Appropriations Committee under Gov. Kathleen Blanco.